Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 November 29

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November 29

Bandwidth costs

I have been asked to do an editorial for the Signpost, and I am doing research for it. Specifically, in 2005 Jimmy Wales told a TED audience the following:

"So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee … We actually hired Brion because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes."

Question: is there any reason to believe that bandwidth costs per page view have gone way up or way down in the last ten years?

Related (and a bit off topic) question: how many page views per month are we seeing ten years later?

For those interested in what I am working on here, see Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-11-26/Op-ed. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:19, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Erik's stats page has page-views per month per wiki - https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 10:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm says it's about 16 million billion page views per month, so unless I made a silly mistake that's roughly ten times more pages we are serving since ten years ago. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:42, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Presumably you mis-typed, and meant "about 16 billion page views per month", Guy? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.248.159.54 (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Of course it is billions. See what I mean about making silly mistakes? :( --Guy Macon (talk) 16:31, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Please compare https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites. Note that https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Pageviews says we are excluding traffic from spiders and banner impressions. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Blocked

How do I get a trusted certificate so that Wikipedia is not blocked? I cannot tell from the globalsign website what certificate goes with Wikipedia. Can you help me out with getting a valid certificate for your site? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.92.140.225 (talk) 12:40, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. The fact that you're posting here suggests that Wikipedia can't be totally blocked. Can you clarify what it is you're trying to do (e.g. register for an account, view an article, etc) and what error message, if any, you are seeing? A screenshot or the exact text of the error would help enormously. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:12, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

You should not need to manually obtain a certifica to use wikipedia on most configs. If you lack the necessary GlobalSign root certificate, it may be wise to consider why you don't have. Most browsers and OSes will have it enabled by default. If it's not present in your config, perhaps it was removed intentionally (so maybe you shouldn't be adding it back) or accidentally/maliciously (in which case there may be bigger problems) or parts of your software are in need of serious updates. Nil Einne (talk) 06:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Try using Wikipedia from outside the US Department of Defense Network. Dbfirs 09:26, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

How can I offer an online course?

It is more than lectures (actually lectures are a minor part). It's basically a series of texts and exercises. What software would it run on? I heard about moodle but do not know how to get started with it. Do I need my own server, domain, and hosting plant to upload an online course using it? What are other options? Hofhof (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

A good place to start your research is Learning management system. --Jayron32 13:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

The sixth form college where I work use Moodle. The teachers have almost all of their learning materials on there and students can access it at will. We host it ourselves. You could host it yourself on your own server or on some rented server space or you could use a Moodle partner to host it for you (see the Moodle website). DIY hosting will (probably) be cheaper, but you will have to rely on community support (which is very good). Partner hosting will include support, but you won't have the flexibility for customization. Moodle is quite easy use at the basic level, but the more advanced features (such as assignments and grading) require an effort to learn. There is plenty of documentation on the Moodle website on getting started. (Other VLEs are available.) --TrogWoolley (talk) 12:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Wayback Machine limitation?

I can find the main page of tangerine.ca, but is there a way to see a subpage? (At https://web.archive.org/web/20160201011542/https://www.tangerine.ca/en/index.html, I want to see the details of the $50 savings bonuses - I think they may have ripped me off.) Clarityfiend (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Generally, links from a Wayback Machine page (at least within a site) point to their saved copy of the linked page, if they have one. For example, on the page you linked, the Savings Account link (from the Saving pulldown near the top) links to https://web.archive.org/web/20160201011542/https://www.tangerine.ca/en/saving/savings-accounts. If you need to do a search to find the subpage you want, that's another matter. --76.71.5.45 (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

The link I want doesn't work. Thanks anyway. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:01, 1 December 2016 (UTC)